Advisory Board

The CTSE advisory board provides suggestions and feedback to the director and staff to assist in shaping the direction of programs and initiatives. The board, which meets twice per semester, is tasked with:

Andrew Cioffi, Director, Disability Services

Aron Darmody, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Business School

Areas of Expertise

Degrees

PhD, York University
MSc, Dublin City University
Bachelor of Commerce, University College Cork

Catherine McCabe, Associate Dean, Sawyer Business School

Dr. McCabe joined the Sawyer Business School Marketing faculty in September 2000. She developed and taught several new courses including sports marketing, business of sports, sports marketing consulting, Boston Red Sox marketing practicum, services marketing, marketing tools and analytics, and business research methods. In addition, Dr. McCabe created the sports marketing minor/concentration by partnering with the Boston Celtics, CSNNE, the Boston Red Sox and other sports organizations. She twice co-chaired committees tasked with revising the SBS undergraduate curriculum and her expertise in Experiential Learning Theory provided the foundation for the current BSBA curriculum. In addition, she developed the marketing honors program as a stand along track for marketing majors and as a gateway for high achieving students to enter the SBS Honors Program. Dr. McCabe was Chair of the Department of Marketing for eight years, during which time the undergraduate marketing program grew by 17%.

Dr. Catherine McCabe is currently the Associate Dean of the Sawyer Business School, Dean of Undergraduate Programs. She remains focused on several critical areas including:

enhancing experiential learning for all undergraduate students through the development of innovative curricular and co-curricular programming;

increasing partnerships with the Boston for-profit and not-for-profit communities resulting in learning experientials, internships and employment opportunities for undergraduate students;

developing programming that focuses on the unique needs of the different SBS undergraduate cohorts (e.g., high achievers, 2nd year students, transfer students, military veterans);

creating opportunities for SBS faculty to engage with students outside of the classroom; and

improving the retention and persistence-to-graduation rates for all SBS undergraduate students.

Diane D'Angelo, Legal Research Librarian

Heather Dwyer, Assistant Director, CTSE

Dr. Heather Dwyer earned her Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis. While at UC Davis, she both coordinated and participated in the Teaching Assistant Consultant Program. Following graduate school, Heather worked as a teaching consultant at the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University, where she supported faculty and graduate students in their teaching. At the Eberly Center, she coordinated the Graduate Teaching Fellows program, the Future Faculty Program, and the Wimmer Faculty Fellows program. Heather has instructed or helped to instruct courses in introductory biology, ecology, evolution, animal diversity, plant systematics, and first-year seminars in the sciences. She is particularly interested in issues of diversity and equity in higher education. Heather joined the CTSE team at Suffolk University as Assistant Director in 2016, and has been involved in educational development since 2011.

Jeff Pokorak, Professor of Law and Special Assistant to the Provost for Faculty Development

Specialty Areas

My research integrates several theoretical models and empirical domains from personality psychology, developmental psychology, and the field of gender studies. More specifically, I have been examining the relations among dispositional theories, developmental models of the ego, and theories of gender role development. Several recent studies have explored how individual differences in adolescent gender role development and ego development predict differences in the behavior, conscious attitudes, and unconscious processes of adolescents and young adults. Using the Loevinger’s model of ego development and Bem’s Gender Schema Theory, I have examined gender, gender role, and ego developmental differences in relationship satisfaction, divorce adjustment, identity development, perceptions of sexual harassment, and dream content.

Ongoing research explores additional behavioral, emotional, and cognitive correlates of these developmental lines. Recent co-authored presentations and publications with doctoral students extend these themes to related domains, including the prediction of adolescent academic achievement, sexual decision-making, experience of guilt and shame, capacity to envision therapeutic goals, valuing of monogamy, and development of political ideologies. My newest projects are exploring ego developmental differences in risky sexual behavior and personal integrity. I am also currently working on several studies that examine various methodological and psychometric properties of the Sentence Completion Test of ego development.

Linda Bruenjes, Acting Director, CTSE

Dr. Linda Bruenjes is the
Acting Director, for the
CTSE. Prior to joining Suffolk University, she was the Assistant Dean for
Teaching & Instructional Technology and Director of the Center for
Teaching, Learning and Technology at MCPHS University. During her 16-year
tenure at Lasell College, she taught a number of undergraduate and graduate
accounting, computer technology, and management information science
courses. She also served as department chair, center director, and
developer and facilitator of the College’s online faculty certification
program. As founding Director of Online Learning and Academic Technology,
Linda assisted faculty in the development, delivery, and assessment of online
and hybrid courses. She earned her doctoral degree at the Graduate School
of Education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and her M. S. in
Business Education at Suffolk University. Her research interests are
strongly embedded in adult learning theory and are focused on faculty
development, the use of technology as a teaching and learning tools, and the
science of learning.

MJ Potvin, Instructor, Accounting, Business School

Mary-Joan (MJ) Potvin earned her Master of Science in Accounting from Suffolk University in May 2005 and became an Instructor in Accounting at the University in the fall of that same year. She has taught a wide range of graduate and undergraduate accounting courses in live and online formats. She is an innovative teacher with a special passion for technology.

Before entering academe, MJ spent nearly 25 years in a variety of roles in industry, including: Audit Manager (PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP), Controller (Variagenics, Inc.), Director of Financial Reporting (Harborside Healthcare Corporation), Director of Project Management (The XBR Company), and Senior Corporate Auditor/Operations Consultant (Melville Corporation). MJ is a licensed CPA (Massachusetts, 1989). She provides accounting, consulting and training services to clients, principally in the biotechnology industry. MJ is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants (MSCPA) and serves on the Board of Directors of the MSCPA Educational Foundation and Scholarship Committee. A graduate of Merrimack College (BSBA Accounting, 1986), she has served on the college's Alumni Business Advisory Council and mentored Merrimack students through the Girard School Mentoring Program.

For four years, Potvin was the Associate Director of Graduate Programs in Accounting at Suffolk, serving as academic advisor to over 250 graduate accounting students, counseling newly admitted students, and recruiting prospective degree candidates. She served on the Graduate Programs Committee and has received formal recognition from her students for excellence in teaching and outstanding service to graduate students.

Pat Reeve, Associate Professor, History

Shailini George, Professor of Legal Writing

Professor George graduated from Boston College Law School in 1993, and from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1990 with a degree in Finance and International Business. After graduating from Boston College Law School, Professor George clerked for the Justices of the Superior Court of Massachusetts. Before joining Suffolk Law School, Professor George was a senior associate at the law firm of Ryan, Coughlin & Betke, LLP, where she specialized in insurance defense litigation. Professor George has been teaching legal writing for the past ten years and is highly involved in the national legal writing community and currently serves as the co-chair of the National Legal Writing Institute’s Scholarship and Development Outreach Committee. She has presented at numerous local, regional, and national conferences and her scholarship has focused on sexual harassment law, cognitive science and learning, and most recently, mindfulness training.

Sharon Britton, Director, Sawyer Library

Sharon Britton is the Director of Mildred F. Sawyer Library at Suffolk University. Sawyer library serves the College of Arts and Sciences and School of Business students. It also serves as a liaison library to students from the Fenway Library Consortia, of which the Library is a member. She is eager to enhance the services and resources of the library to better serve Suffolk’s students, faculty and administrators and welcomes constructive feedback from all patrons. She has recently formed a Library Advisory Board to assist her and her colleagues at Sawyer in meeting and perhaps surpassing expectations of students, faculty and administrators.

Ms. Britton holds a BA in English with a Psychology minor, from Bridgewater State University, and a Master of Library Science (MLS) from the University of Rhode Island. Sharon came to the University in July, 2013, She was previously Library Director at Bowling Green State University—Firelands Campus, in Huron, Ohio. She has also served as the Director of Public Services at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and Assistant University Librarian at the University of New Hampshire.

Outside of Library Science and Psychology, Sharon’s interests are biking, hiking, kayaking, and of course reading. At Bowling Green she served as Co-Advisor to the Women’s Resource Group, an organization originally formed as a resource for battered and other at risk women on campus. It’s role expanded to include social activities such as performing Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues, in which she read one of the monologues in a campus production. The Group received the Feminist Falcon (university mascot) Award for Institutional Change.